We flew to into Paris via Charles-de-Gaulle Airport, rented a car and drove to Meaux, for the night, on the way to Germany and the cousins (saving the actual Paris for dessert). My first jetlagged impression, shock really, is that there are so many black people here – African-French? – way more than anywhere in the Bay Area, including Oakland. I think part of it, all of it, maybe, is that Meaux is an outer suburb of Paris and I remember reading, somewhere, sometime ago, that the outer suburbs of Paris are where a majority of immigrants live but, so far, not many women wearing Hajibs. 
All posts by Steve Stern
A short stop in Iceland
We flew WOW to Europe with a 19-hour stop in Iceland. We left San Francisco about 8 pm, landed in Iceland about 10 am the next morning drove around a little, got a bite to eat, went to bed at about 9 pm, and got up at 3:30 to catch the flight to Paris. 
The Cousin’s Trip: European Edition
We are going to Europe tomorrow. Our excuse is that we are going to go to a reunion of Michele’s father’s extended family. Strangely, I think of Michele’s extended family as somehow American because I have only seen them here, here as at our house for dinner or at Tahoe, or Arkansas, or South Carolina. But, most of the cousins are European and while Michele has gone to Reunions in Ireland and The Czech Republic, this will be the first time I will see the family – the German Branch, anyway – in their native habitat.
The Donald. Incompetence and Competence
The scandal won’t go away, largely because Donald Trump and his lawyers have propelled it forward. Amy Davidson Sorkin, the first line in a snarky article in the New Yorker about Trump’s incompetence in trying to make the Stormy Daniels problem go away.
For me, one of the surprising things about the Trump Administration is Trump’s petulant incompetence. From early in his presidency, when his Travel Ban came up to the Supreme Court and Trump’s website still said: “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the country” that forced the Supreme Court ruling against the ban on religious rights grounds, to leaking Israeli intel to the Russians, to bragging about lying to Trudeau, Trump continually seems to undermine himself. Then he does something even more surprising, orchestrate a subtle campaign to get Justice Kennedy to retire. In an article in the New York Times, Adam Liptak and Maggie Haberman detail that campaign. It is scary reading and I recommend it.
Distracted by shiny objects
Republicans have blown this deficit up to places one couldn’t even imagine it could go: a statement by Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) who still voted for the 2019 military budget of approximately 716 billion dollars.
While the press – and, correspondingly, the people who rely on the press for information, that’s us – have been watching the Trump Administration put children in cages, a bi-partisan Congress has voted for a new military budget. A military budget that includes a boost in defense spending of approximately 82 billion dollars for next year. To put that in perspective, the increase just voted on is bigger than the entire Russian military budget which was 69.2 billion dollars last year (according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute).
Think about that for a second, the increase of the United States’ military budget, next year over this year, is bigger than Russia’s entire military budget. Lest you think that this is all the nasty Republicans’ fault, the 2019 military budget was a bi-partisan effort with only ten Senators voting against it and two of the Ney voters were Republicans (Mike Lee and Paul Rand). I am glad to say that both of California’s Senators, as well as Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, voted Nay. I wasn’t surprised that Bernie voted Nay, but I am surprised Cory Booker voted Yea for the increase, seeing as how he is rumored to be running for President.
It is interesting to note that the Department of Education estimates that free college – belittled by much of the political establishment, on both sides of the aisle, as being unaffordable – would cost about 62.6 billion dollars, about 20 billion dollars less than the one year increase for our already bloated military. In my opinion, this is a good measure of our National Values and it is hard for me not to get enraged.